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Hesitancy to use regional US/UK terms
Thread poster: G. L.
Rachel Fell
Rachel Fell  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:45
French to English
+ ...
Aeroplanes Feb 15, 2018

Jack Doughty wrote:

Airplane is the US English term, no question. But in UK English, aeroplane is not often used nowadays. Aircraft is the preferred word (unless it is something more specific, like airliner).

If I see one of those machines with wings flying above me in the sky I call it an aeroplane, not an aircraft, though.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 17:45
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Hear, hear! Feb 15, 2018

Chris S wrote:
If American translators stopped taking British English jobs and British translators stopped taking American English jobs (and if legal translators stopped taking technical jobs and technical translators stopped taking legal jobs), customers would get quicker, cheaper and better translations, and the translators would all make more money and be able to put out work they can be truly proud of.

I had one regular client who suddenly decided to change from British to American English. I agreed to stay working with them for a while but the job was never as satisfying. They didn't want to spend money, of course, so their website was left in a total mess. And then there was the ESL author who came to me on personal recommendation for an editing job. It turned out he'd written it in American English, and he wanted it kept that way - except that he insisted on "axe" rather than "ax", and he wanted all distances in metres and kilometres (well, meters and kilometers, to be exact) and temperatures in degrees Celsius. That ended up as a grit-your-teeth, the-customer-is-always-right case. Sigh!

It's always going to be difficult with existing clients but I'm going to try to stick to my guns in the future. We should be working into language we instinctively KNOW is right, not what the dictionary and dear old Google tell us is right.


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 18:45
French to English
I think it depends Feb 15, 2018

Chris S wrote:

If American translators stopped taking British English jobs and British translators stopped taking American English jobs (and if legal translators stopped taking technical jobs and technical translators stopped taking legal jobs), customers would get quicker, cheaper and better translations, and the translators would all make more money and be able to put out work they can be truly proud of.

Whenever I've been coerced into translating in the wrong field or language, I've hated every minute of it. You're not doing yourself or anyone else any favours.


If my customer mostly wants BE but needs to send a document to an American as a one-off, they're probably better off asking me, because I have learned a fair bit about the firm in the time I've translated for them. I'll certainly do a much better job than if they tried to do it themselves after I refused, which is a more likely scenario than them looking for another translator.

I might also ask a US colleague to look over my translation to be sure of avoiding any misunderstandings if it's really important.

I'm not a technical translator, but I have done plenty of technical translations. So I can occasionally do one when a client asks me for one. I'll warn them that I'll be asking more questions than usual.

I totally agree that letting yourself be coerced is not a good idea, whether you're hesitant because of the language, or the subject matter, or the deadline, or technical details or whatever.


 
Anna Jaffe
Anna Jaffe
Netherlands
Local time: 18:45
Dutch to English
+ ...
American who does translate into UK English Feb 18, 2018

I admit I may slip up occasionally, but having lived in the US as a child and Europe as an adult, I honestly feel fairly comfortable with both US and UK English. I call myself a native speaker of American English, but state I feel competent to do both, and customers seem to be fine with that. I also agree with the Finnish translator that clients often specify UK English as a sort of default when they really mean "international/European".

 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 18:45
French to English
"international/European"??? Feb 18, 2018

AnnasOdds wrote:

I admit I may slip up occasionally, but having lived in the US as a child and Europe as an adult, I honestly feel fairly comfortable with both US and UK English. I call myself a native speaker of American English, but state I feel competent to do both, and customers seem to be fine with that. I also agree with the Finnish translator that clients often specify UK English as a sort of default when they really mean "international/European".


I'd say it's fine for somebody who's lived in both the US and the UK to offer both variants.

However a client who means "international/European" needs educating about the variants of English, rather than being pandered to. There's no such thing as international or European English. I remember being asked to produce a translation in International English because it was to be sent to some Japanese people. It was a highly complex text in French, and they wanted me to dumb it down to be sure of the Japanese understanding the text. I told them that I had no idea as to what Japanese might find difficult in English so it would be very hard to dumb down, and that they ought to dumb down their French text and I would translate it readily, even give them a discount if it was easy enough for me to not have to look anything up. Strangely, they couldn't dumb their French down, there were no easy synonyms for the technical words. Well, same goes for English, matey.

Turns out in fact that
1) they wanted it in English rather than Japanese because they didn't speak Japanese and the boss was a control freak who didn't want anything written that he couldn't understand
2) they wanted it in simple English because the boss was a control freak who didn't want anything written that he couldn't understand, and his English was abysmal. He was also a total narcissist so everybody had to tiptoe round the fact that his English was abysmal, he couldn't be shown up.

Well, pussyfooting round a narcissist was one of the things I really looked forward to no longer doing as a freelancer rather than an employee.


 
LEXpert
LEXpert  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:45
Member (2008)
Croatian to English
+ ...
Language variant or localization issue? Feb 18, 2018

Sheila Wilson wrote
except that he insisted on "axe" rather than "ax", and he wanted all distances in metres and kilometres (well, meters and kilometers, to be exact) and temperatures in degrees Celsius.


Axe was standard in US English for a long time and the trend (not a universal dictate by any means) towards a preference for 'ax' is fairly recent. Meters, kilometers and degrees Celsius are entirely proper terms in US English. Contrary to popular belief, Americans do actually use the metric system - almost universally in education and science, though admittedly less so in commerce and the media. Depending on the intended use and audience, these terms may present localization issues, but generally speaking it is entirely appropriate to use them in US English in the correct context.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 17:45
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Rather proves the point :) Feb 19, 2018

LEXpert wrote:
Axe was standard in US English for a long time and the trend (not a universal dictate by any means) towards a preference for 'ax' is fairly recent. Meters, kilometers and degrees Celsius are entirely proper terms in US English. Contrary to popular belief, Americans do actually use the metric system - almost universally in education and science, though admittedly less so in commerce and the media. Depending on the intended use and audience, these terms may present localization issues, but generally speaking it is entirely appropriate to use them in US English in the correct context.

That rather proves the point, then: "popular belief" is what outsiders have to go on, whereas native speakers know the facts.

AnnasOdds wrote:
I also agree with the Finnish translator that clients often specify UK English as a sort of default when they really mean "international/European".

Shouldn't that be round the other way? There's really no such thing as "international/European" English, but there is such a thing as UK English. And if that's what clients want (and understand why they want it) then that's what they must be given.


 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 17:45
Danish to English
+ ...
Natives and metrics Feb 19, 2018

Sheila Wilson wrote:

native speakers know the facts.



Not the natives at Lockheed Martin.

NASA ended up crashing the Mars Climate Orbiter into Mars in 1999. Reason:

“The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. Specifically, software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings produced results in pound-seconds. The trajectory calculation software then used these results - expected to be in newton-seconds - to update the predicted position of the spacecraft.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure

Fortunately the term for a flashlight or torch is rather insignificant next to such a failure.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 17:45
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Hands don't always make the best communicators Feb 20, 2018

Thomas T. Frost wrote:
NASA ended up crashing the Mars Climate Orbiter into Mars in 1999. Reason:

“The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. Specifically, software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings produced results in pound-seconds. The trajectory calculation software then used these results - expected to be in newton-seconds - to update the predicted position of the spacecraft.”

Sadly, even when everyone speaks the same language, right hands are often not quite on the same wavelength as left hands. That was indeed a sad occasion - all that tremendously advanced technology with the best of the human brains applied to it, and yet... .


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 18:45
French to English
best of the human brains Feb 20, 2018

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Sadly, even when everyone speaks the same language, right hands are often not quite on the same wavelength as left hands. That was indeed a sad occasion - all that tremendously advanced technology with the best of the human brains applied to it, and yet... .


at least we can take comfort that, when we make mistakes, we are in the company of the best of human brains


 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 18:45
Spanish to English
+ ...
Sots wha hae! Feb 21, 2018

Jack Doughty wrote:

Aye, and while ye're at hame in bonnie Scotland, ye might visit its ancient capital, Scone - which is pronounced Scoon.


Here's tae us, wha's like us? Damn few and they're all deid!

https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/best-scottish-phrase-1-1148412


 
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